Whale safety key in Navy dispute

Accidental disturbance, harm or even killing of some marine mammals, including endangered whale species, would be allowed during Navy training under a proposal offered this week for public review.

The proposed rules have reignited a long-running disagreement between the Navy and environmental activists, who say the plan's safeguards are inadequate.

The plan's estimate of “take” – forcing changes in behavior, or causing temporary or permanent injury, or death – includes effects from sonar, explosives training and ship strikes.

“The vast majority of these takes are taking place in Southern California,” said Zak Smith, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This is being borne by species we care about, right here in the Southland.”

The Navy, however, says actual harm to marine mammals would be far lower than the estimates appearing in the proposal. Those include a maximum of 2,000 injuries allowed over a five-year period, and about 150 deaths.

ESTIMATING INJURIES

“We certainly would not expect those types of impacts to occur,” said Alex Stone, the Navy's project manager for the environmental impact statement.

The estimates, which include another 9 million instances of potential disturbance to marine mammal behavior, are part of a body of proposed rules for Navy training off Southern California and around the Hawaiian islands between 2014 and 2019.

The publication of the proposal Thursday by the National Marine Fisheries Service triggers a period for public review and comment through March 11.

The rules include a variety of protective measures, most already in place, to reduce the chances of death, injury or disturbance. Spotters, on the surface or in the air, would continue to search for signs of marine mammals near training areas, shutting down sonar training if any appeared within a “marine mammal mitigation zone.”

A humpback whale “cautionary area” also has been designated around Hawaii during winter months.

Safety zones during explosives training would be extended under the new rules. Such training cannot take place if sea mammals are detected in the zones.

The zones would be expanded to a 1,000-yard radius, larger for some situations than in a draft of the proposal released in May. It is a response to the only known incident off Southern California resulting in death of sea mammals because of Navy training.

In 2011, four dolphins were killed when they swam unexpectedly into an area where a timed explosive device was set to go off; the device could not be deactivated.

EXPANDED SAFETY ZONES

The new safety zones should be so large that marine mammals crossing into them would not have time to swim close enough to be injured once explosive charges are set, Stone said.

The proposed rules also include a stranding response plan, although whale or dolphin strandings related to Navy training appear to occur rarely, if at all, in the Hawaii or Southern California training areas.

Some experts say a 2004 stranding incident involving more than 150 melon-headed whales in Hawaii's Hanalei Bay might have been related to Navy sonar. Others are uncertain about the connection. All but a malnourished calf left the bay safely.

Such strandings have been more strongly linked to Navy sonar elsewhere, including a 2000 incident in the Bahamas involving the stranding of beaked whales.

Examinations of whales that died after stranding showed bleeding around the ears and other parts of their auditory systems; investigators found that mid-range sonar used by the Navy was the “most plausible source” of their injuries. The injuries might have been a contributing cause in the whale strandings.

“The cases where there have been stranded marine mammals in the presence of Navy sonar have been kind of unusual oceanographic situations, very specific geographies,” Stone said. “It's really not the kind of thing we come across in Southern California or Hawaii.”

But Smith of the Natural Resources Defense Council contends we might never find out about many of the injuries resulting in death of sea mammals.

“We wouldn't expect to have physical evidence of these injuries,” he said. “Most marine mammals, when they die at sea, they sink.”

He also says the potential for death, injury or disturbance could be reduced if the Navy would avoid training in areas where numbers of marine mammals are high.

Restrictions on such areas could be flexible, he said, so they could be lifted if the Navy had a specific need to train within them.

“Real-world events do change, and they need to train in these areas for purposes of military readiness,” Smith said. “We'll build in triggers that allow you to conduct that training. Otherwise, how about staying out of those areas.”

Stone said monitoring has revealed no evidence of major effects on marine mammals off Southern California from Navy training, despite many years of training in the region.

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